Rebel Darling E-Book

Valerie Best

• Herausgeber: 8th Note Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Immune
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 330

Beschreibung

Find someone who makes the world worth saving.In what was once New York City, where the government has fallen and the violent, martial Keepers now rule, teenage Hannah Darling possesses the cure to the world's deadly virus within her veins. When she's captured by the Keepers and sentenced to death for leading the Resistance, her only hope lies in Anthony Fletcher--once a childhood friend, then a school rival, and now son of her greatest enemy. No one is more surprised than Hannah when Anthony is willing to hide her. No one except Anthony himself.Anthony barely recognizes the wounded and traumatized Hannah as the girl who launched the Resistance at only 15. But Hannah is still determined to end the Keepers violent rule, and she's now desperate enough to escape the city towards a CDC that might be in ruins. So she sets off on a dangerous cross-country odyssey with Fletcher as her reluctant companion. Together, they face not only the infected, Zombie-like Strangers, but the relentless pursuit of the Keepers. As their bond deepens, they discover startling truths about themselves and each other, realizing that, like their pasts, their futures are irrevocably intertwined.But when betrayal strikes from an unexpected source, Hannah must race against time to secure the vaccine that could save humanity, unaware that Anthony—the boy with the secrets, the boy she's fallen for—is the one who holds the power to save their world ... or let it burn. Combining non-stop action with a page-turning enemies to lovers romance,   Rebel Darling   is the perfect YA novel for fans of   The Last of Us . 

Leseprobe

REBEL DARLING

IMMUNE

BOOK 1

VALERIE BEST

8TH NOTE PRESS

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Sorry Boys, I Don’t Do Autographs

2. Just Keep It Together

3. A Rich Man’s Son

4. Buttermilk

5. What Day Is It?

6. I Just Love to Travel

7. The Patron Saint of Lost Causes

8. We Have to Get You out of Here

9. Restless

10. You Set Me Up

11. A Poison Pill

12. A Wound That Won’t Close

13. Folktales

14. Just You

15. Deliver Us

16. There Is No One Else

17. Strangers

18. Everyone Is Dangerous

19. My Only Still Thing

20. The Wanderers

21. Nobody’s Home

22. The Lotus-Eaters

23. Search Party

24. Complications

25. There’s No Going Back with a Name Like Mine

26. War-Torn

27. Lots of Ways to Die

28. A Magnet for Troubled Souls

29. Floodwaters

30. Blood-Soaked, Crazy-Eyed Gremlin

31. Liars

32. We Save the World

About Traitor Darling

Excerpt

About the Author

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Published by 8th Note Press

Text Copyright © 2023 by Valerie Best

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-961795-10-5

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the publisher.

Cover Design by Marshall Peschell

Cover Illustration by MadliArts

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Katherine Pelz, who has read this story in many iterations, and tended to it across years. Writing can be a lonely process, but having someone who believes in your work makes it feel so much less so. Thank you to James Best, Adriann Ranta, Phillip Dyess-Nugent, and Annie Howington who have been such consummate friends and faithful readers of my work for so many years. And thank you to the readers, who will shape this story each time it is read.

CHAPTER1

SORRY BOYS, I DON’T DO AUTOGRAPHS

Hannah didn’t enjoy the ride to her execution.

Exhausted, she had drifted off, but woke with a jerk as the truck bucked over the uneven road.

“You can still do it, you know.”

She peered through the dim light of the transport truck to a gaunt-faced man sitting on the long bench opposite her. He looked old, but she couldn’t be sure; prison aged them fast.

“Do what?”

“Defeat them,” the man said, his gaze intent. “I followed your group’s efforts. I listened to the radio broadcasts. Read the pamphlets.”

Hannah leaned back and stretched her legs out in front of her. “I hope that’s not what landed you here.”

He shook his head. “I’m a Susceptible. I was always going to end up here.” He leaned forward. “The Keepers want us to think they’re prepared, that they’re organized, but they’re not.”

She sighed. “We know that. There are authors of the Keepers’ declaration who have been trying to get out for years. Since the raids started. But—” she shook her head, even as it pounded with the effort, “the bastards just have more resources.”

Cat-like, the man moved across the truck to sit next to her. She leaned away as he spoke close to her face.

“There are many in their ranks who lose faith. The ship has sprung a thousand leaks,” he said fervently.

Up close she could see that the man’s eyes glinted with mania, and when she felt his hand press against her thigh, her reaction was pure instinct—she knocked the hand away and pushed him back, compressing his windpipe, pressing him against the thick canvas of the transport so it bowed out behind him. Something fell from his hand and clattered to the floor behind her, metal ringing against metal.

The old man was gasping something.

“What?” she snapped.

“For . . . you,” he gasped.

Wary, she loosened her hold. Silent a moment before, the pain in her body screamed again, and she slid back onto her seat, every inch of her throbbing.

The man lurched forward, scuttling between the other prisoners, stopping at the feet of a hard-looking woman, and snatched something from the floor. He made his unsteady way back to Hannah and sat, pressing an object into her hand. “For you,” he breathed, his whisper insistent.

Hannah looked down. It was a—she searched for the word—a pocketknife. The blue enamel of the hilt was cracked and the metal was scabby with rust, but when she flipped it open, she sucked in a breath. The blade was the length of her palm and half its width. The steel was dull and sharp enough to split a hair down the center. “Where did you get this?”

“A leak,” the man hissed.

Hannah folded the blade back into the hilt and held it out to the old man. “Keep it. You might do more good with it than I will.”

He pressed her hand closed around the knife. “You must,” he said, and for a moment his eyes looked almost sane.

Hannah hefted the weight of it in her hand. “I’ll do what I can,” she finally said.

“You must do more than you can,” the man said urgently. “Far more than you are capable of. This is the moment.”

The truck lurched to a stop. The old man swung himself back to his bench, and all around her, the other prisoners woke up and shifted in their seats. Hannah slipped the knife into the pocket of her jeans just as the canvas flap was pulled aside.

“Well, well, well,” said a voice that made bile rise into her mouth.

She closed her throat quickly, so she wouldn’t throw up.

She took a deep breath and took notice of every inch of her body. Everything hurt. Her left eye throbbed, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and she had at least a few broken ribs. But in that moment, every inch of herself was hers alone.

She let out the breath and stood up, walking toward the man who held the canvas open.

He laughed. “See this, boys? I told you she was hot for me. Look at her, running toward me.”

It was always like this for Hannah. She would come to a problem that seemed impossible to solve. A chasm with no way across. It worked best if she didn’t know what she was going to do beforehand. She worked best if she could build the bridge as she went.

Now she walked toward him. Oliver Shaw. Her bridge.

“That’s right, baby, hop on down here,” he said, looking her up and down as she jumped from the truck.

Landing on the hardpacked dirt sent a shockwave of pain through her body, but she hadn’t flinched for four years. She wasn’t going to start now.

Voices rumbled around her as the Keeper guards recognized her.

“Man, she looks like shit.”

“What’d they do to her?”

“That’s not her, dipshit.”

“Yeah, it is, look at her eyes.”

“She smells like she was dropped in the shitter. Your standards are taking a nosedive, Shaw.”

“What standards?”

The laughter was a dim buzz in her ears. Her eyes were on Oliver.

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It never had, not in the six years she’d known him.

“You’ll have to excuse them. It’s their first time meeting a celebrity. Guys, meet Hannah Darling, leader of the Resistance.” He stared at her for a long moment. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your fans?”

Hannah kept her eyes on Oliver. “Sorry boys, I don’t do autographs.”

Oliver’s laugh sounded like grating metal. He reached out a hand and traced a finger down her cheek. Lovingly. “I love that you never change, Darling. Makes it so fun to pull that stick out of your ass myself.”

Hannah closed her throat again, using every aching muscle in her body to keep herself from shuddering as he touched her.

She had known Oliver in school. He’d been a Keeper sympathizer even then, so she’d had little to do with him. He’d been with the Guard the first time she’d been arrested. He’d put her restraints on, tightening them so the steel bit into her flesh, and his hungry eyes on her in the back of the transport had been one of her most vivid memories of the experience.

She’d had reason to wonder before that, but she’d known it then—in the glittering way he’d stared at her—Oliver loved her. It was sick and obsessive and absolutely deadly, and now it had come to this.

Hannah met his eyes and nearly smiled. For the first time ever, she and Oliver Shaw were on the exact same page. Because Hannah had arrived at the site of her execution. For both herself and Oliver Shaw, it was now or never.

“You’ve got to be shitting me, Shaw. They want her out there now,” came a voice from over her shoulder.

Hannah felt her bridge sway under her feet. So much depended on Oliver. Her gamble was the depth of his obsession. Unless he really wanted her, wanted to hurt her more than he cared about his job—and possibly his life—this wasn’t going to work.

“They’re waiting for us to bring her in. McSwain’s going to be here in a second, asking questions.”

She watched Oliver hesitate, weighing out his options. It was an odd thing to hope for, but she held her breath.

Another prisoner from the transport, thinking they were supposed to be unloading, approached the canvas.

Oliver raised his gun and shot the man in the head. Hannah jumped back as the man toppled into the dust at her feet.

Oliver holstered his gun. “Tell McSwain this guy started to transform and it took time to subdue him.”

“So pathetic. They’re going to have you by the nuts for this.”

Oliver grabbed Hannah’s arm, holding as tightly as he could. “Get the rest of that trash unloaded. I’ll be back in three minutes.”

This was met with a chorus of whistles and jeers, and he marched her into the trees. The forest—once banished from the city—encroached everywhere now, and they only had to go ten feet in to be obscured from view. He slammed her against the rough bark of the tree and pressed himself against her. His smell—sweat mixed with a bathtub’s worth of black-market cologne—nearly overwhelmed her.

Hannah kept her hand at her side, hovering over the knife in her pocket, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

Oliver was taller than her, and the body he shoved against her was solid as the oak behind her back. She had to wait for her moment.

His buzzed head nuzzled into her neck, and she actively fought off nausea.

“I knew you wanted this, Darling. I knew it back in school. I could see it when you looked at me. I saw it when we first arrested you. The way you looked at me, in your handcuffs. I knew I just had to—have you—tied,” he thrust his hips against her, “up . . .” Oliver’s breath had started to hitch, and he seemed to be having trouble stringing words together.

He flipped her around and pushed hard against her, pressing her face into the tree’s scabby bark.

Her hand twitched over her knife, but she didn’t move to grab it.

This wasn’t the moment.

In the distance she heard shouts as the Keeper guards unloaded the transport truck.

They didn’t have much time.

The thought must have occurred to Oliver too. Behind her, she heard the sound of a zipper, then the unmistakable sound of a belted gun holster clattering to the ground as he dropped his pants.

“Turn ’round,” he muttered, grabbing her by the shoulders and spinning her toward him. “Lemme see your face, Darling.”

She turned and, for a moment, met Oliver’s eyes. So light they were nearly colorless, they were glazed over now, his eyelids at half-mast, as though about to fall asleep. His eyes ranged over her face, but she had no idea what he saw. Though somewhere in her muddied brain, she knew he wasn’t looking at her, he was remembering. Remembering a girl who’d scorned him at school. The girl he’d helped arrest a year ago.

He ran his soft hands up her arms and pressed down on her shoulders until she knelt in front of him.

For no one’s benefit but her own, she gave a half shrug.

This was the moment.

She ran her left hand up Oliver’s pale thigh as misdirect while she retrieved the knife. His groan covered the small pop when she flipped open the blade, and without further ceremony, she drove the knife into his thigh and yanked up, severing the femoral artery.

She stood and stepped aside as blood geysered, spattering the tree. She wasn’t fast enough—she never seemed to be, these days—and it splashed on her jeans and dotted her filthy T-shirt.

Oliver’s eyes went wide with shock and he looked down, slowly. “Wha’ happened?” he gasped, pale as a sheet. Without waiting for an answer, he toppled over, into the underbrush.

His angle changed, the spray of blood aerosolizing across Hannah’s face as Oliver’s heart pumped another liter through his faulty plumbing.

Finally giving in, Hannah leaned over, heaving. There was nothing in her stomach to throw up, but she held the tree, spitting, tasting Oliver’s blood in her mouth.

She heard the jangle of the Keeper guards as they approached the edge of the trees, looking for them. She took a step toward Oliver’s inert form—toward his gun—but every instinct screamed at her to get away.

It physically pained her to move away, leaving his gun, but she sprinted deeper into the trees just as the Keeper guards drew near.

No longer anyone’s prisoner, Hannah stumbled deeper into the woods.

CHAPTER2

JUST KEEP IT TOGETHER

Four days later, Hannah sat on a park bench as the sun began to set and forced herself to admit she was a little discouraged. She had ringed the outer border, but the lack of an exit point and unbearable hunger had driven her back toward the center of New City. She’d moved carefully, checking every Resistance rendezvous point in the city. She had done a loop of them, but no one had showed their face.

There were Keeper guards everywhere, and a new, inconveniently strict curfew. Anyone out after sundown had their papers thoroughly reviewed and then, as a parting gift, were beaten and sent to lockup. Hannah had nearly learned this the hard way when she’d found herself watching the patrolling guards from the inside of an abandoned car.

She’d been picking up everything she saw, not knowing what would be useful, and had been making good use of an old black sweatshirt. She doubted she looked much like herself under any circumstances, but she was taking no chances.

Other than the chance she took killing Oliver and fleeing from the site of her scheduled execution. Other than that, she was taking no chances.

She was looking everywhere for signs of the Resistance—posters, pamphlets, the pictographs they had made up to communicate through the city—but she saw nothing. And the absence of communication made her feel even worse.

She leaned back on the bench, pulling the hood lower over her face as a group of young women passed her. Laughing, of all things.

She looked at the sky, where an aura of fire was lighting the horizon. She remembered laughing like that with Charlie and Sharra when they’d made up the pictograms. They had been her idea, based on hobo symbols from the twentieth century. They’d designed them to be subtle, almost as though they could be accidental. A spray-painted curve, like a smile, meant there were Resistance sympathizers within. A triangle, slashed through, meant to stay away.

“Why don’t we just do a frown if we want to indicate Keeper sympathizers?” Charlie had asked too loudly, like he always got after a beer or two.

“What if someone approaches it from the wrong angle?” Hannah had said.

Charlie had looked at her for a moment, his brown eyes warm and alive, and then thrown back his head and laughed.

Hannah swallowed, thinking of Charlie. Of Sharra. Of beer.

The public drinking fountains had been turned off years ago, just after the second outbreak, but she’d managed to get a long drink from a rain barrel behind a shop a few days ago. She’d been eating scraps, but—even doing more than she could—she knew she only had a few more days. The hunger and pain were making her sloppy. Her brain had grown undependable, and the fatigue was making it worse.

She sighed and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, the sunset was over—long over, from the look of the dark sky.

She sighed again. She’d thought she had a couple more days left in her before she made this kind of mistake.

She got up, intent on heading deeper into the park. It was growing darker by the minute, and if she made it past the reflected light of the street, she might be able to pass the night. The night guard was young and stayed away from shadows, so if she could make it to the darkness of the trees, she could count on them being too scared to patrol too near.

“Curfew was an hour ago, kid,” a voice attached to a pair of boots said, stepping into her path.

Hannah didn’t look up. “Heading home now,” she said quietly.

“Need to see your papers. You know the drill,” the voice said, sounding bored.

Hannah’s mind ran the scenarios. None of them looked promising.

The boots shifted and the voice sounded like it was stifling a yawn. “Papers, dumbass. I don’t have all day.”

“Left ’em at home,” Hannah said, letting her voice rumble in its lowest register, still not looking up.

“That figures,” the voice said, irritated. “Fletcher, get over here, would you?”

Hannah’s blood ran ice cold.

She gave her head an imperceptible shake. It wasn’t an uncommon name. It had to be someone else.

From somewhere behind her she heard a slow, booted tread approaching.

Her hands clenched inside her pockets.

There was no way.

“Fletch, I can’t deal with any more of this. When are they going to lift this shitty curfew?”

“You got somewhere else you gotta be, Vic?” the other voice said.

Beads of sweat broke out on Hannah’s head. She had never known another human whose smirk she could hear.

Anthony Fletcher stood in front of her.

“Papers, dipshit, and don’t be all day.”

“Said he doesn’t have ’em,” the bored guard said.

“Well, that’s a problem,” Fletcher said. He didn’t sound overtly threatening, but to Hannah’s ears, every word spoken in that voice was laced with menace. “Where are they?”

Keeping her eyes on his boots, Hannah gave him a tiny, one-shoulder shrug.

No one said anything for a long moment.

“Fletch?” the guard named Vic asked, after a moment. “Are you going to take care of it or what?”

“Where’d you say your papers were?” Fletcher asked again.

His voice sounded calm, but Hannah thought she heard an edge.

“Home,” she said, practically swallowing the word.

“Are we going to be wrapping up at any point in the near future? I’m too senior to pull a night shift,” Vic asked, his voice teetering on the edge of a whine.

“Yeah, get out of here,” Fletcher said evenly. “I’ll take care of this.”

Vic’s boots turned, then paused. “I mean, I can do it, I guess. I know you’re not here for this stupid shit.” He heaved a sigh. “I’ll take him in.”

Vic grabbed Hannah roughly by the arm, and she had to grind her teeth together to keep from crying out with pain as he yanked her toward the street.

Fletcher caught up with them easily. He grabbed her elbow but didn’t pull. “I’ll take it. Get out of here. If Lewis catches you hanging around, he’s going to make you do a night shift.”

“He can’t make me pull a double,” Vic said, whining in earnest now.

“So get out of here,” Fletcher said again. “It’s been a while since I got to process anyone.”

Vic chuckled. “Yeah. I’ve seen how you process these jokers. Make sure you leave enough to be cuffed.”

Still chuckling, Vic walked away, leaving Hannah alone with Anthony Fletcher.

He gave her a little push to start her walking down the dark street, now empty but for the two of them.

Her free hand brushed the knife, still in the pocket of her jeans. As soon as they passed an alleyway, she’d make her move. The odds weren’t good, but anything was better than letting Anthony Fletcher lead her back to the Keepers.

Hannah had spent the last four days—the last four years—hunted by fear, but this indignity felt particularly sharp.

Anthony Fletcher had been a thorn in her side her whole life. Their parents had been acquaintances—tenuous friends at the best of times—but their politics had driven them further and further apart until they’d stopped seeing each other completely. In an attempt at normalcy, the loose community in what used to be called Brooklyn kept a school running—Poly Prep, formerly an exclusive private academy. Hannah hadn’t even recognized Anthony as the little boy she’d used to climb trees with. But he’d recognized her. She could still remember the way her name had sounded ringing through the corridor just before the start of orientation. She’d turned around and found a stranger smirking at her.

“Yeah?” she’d asked, her guard instinctively up.

“Surprised to see you here. My father didn’t think your mother had the nerve to send you.”

She’d only been thirteen at the time, but she’d had an instinct for trouble, even then. She’d given him a once-over and asked, casually, “And who, exactly, is your father?”

It was the only time in their two years at school she saw him visibly angry.

Their dislike had hardened into a true antipathy by the time the raid on Poly happened, late in their second year, wiping out half their school with a series of dubious immunity tests. Those found vulnerable had been taken, not even given a chance to pick up their things from the dormitory. They’d never returned.

That’s when Hannah started organizing.

Anthony’s father was a founding member of the Keepers—it was those politics that had driven a wedge between him and Hannah’s mother—and to have called Anthony a Keeper sympathizer would have been a gross understatement. He didn’t sympathize with the Keepers. He was born a Keeper. He’d ratted her recruitment efforts out to the administration and Hannah had barely escaped. That’s when she’d gone underground.

Unable to stop herself, she yanked her arm from his grasp.

“Just keep it together,” he said, his voice low.

“Fletcher!” a man’s voice called, and he slowed.

“Taking one in,” Fletcher said in a bored tone.

“No papers?” the man asked.

“Apparently at home,” Fletcher said, still walking. “Want to get this processed so I can get the hell out of here.”

“Just ran into Vic. He was still hanging around, so I offered a night shift,” the man said, and Hannah didn’t think she was mishearing the maliciousness in the tone.

“I’ll bet you did. Glad to accept, was he?” Fletcher said dryly.

“Better believe it. You sure you want to do this? I can get one of my junior guys to do this for you. Get you home a little early. I’m going to head out myself. Maybe you and me can—”

“No,” Fletcher said shortly. “If everyone would crawl out of my ass about it, I could have had it done ten minutes ago.”

“Sorry,” the man said, sounding offended. “Catch you tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” Fletcher said vaguely, and taking Hannah’s elbow again, increased his stride.

Hannah tried to think as fast as she could. Her face was hidden in her hood, so she’d lost track of where they were. She needed to make sure she could hide fast once she attacked him, so, carefully looking away from him, she raised her head and scanned around, trying to orient herself.

They were closing in on a likely looking alleyway, and Hannah’s hand moved to her pocket.

Ten more feet.

Five.

Two more feet and she’d—

“If you’d not try to kill me right now, I think it would work out for both of us, Darling,” Fletcher said, his voice low and menacing.

Hannah’s hand around the knife went limp. She stayed on her feet, barely, but her whole body sagged, as though her air had been let out.

He tightened his grip on her arm. “Just keep it together,” he repeated.

It wasn’t possible that she’d fallen asleep while walking, but she could never remember that walk through the city. It was only when she heard a jangle of keys that she came back to herself. They were standing on the stoop of a small house and Fletcher was opening the front door. Hannah looked behind her. Low, industrial buildings, long street. Dark, with just a few lights peeking out like stars. They could be anywhere on the outskirts of New City. It wasn’t until a small breeze blew around her that she recognized the unmistakable smell of the harbor in the air.

Fletcher led her into the dark hallway, and the sound of the door shutting behind them made Hannah flinch, for the first time in years.

Next to her, Fletcher gave a snort of derision and propelled her toward the stairs. At the top, he opened a door and stepped inside without a word. He hit a light switch and an airy apartment with high windows and hardwood floors was illuminated.

She stood on the threshold, teetering as though at the end of a diving board.

“In or out,” he said, shrugging out of his uniform jacket.

Hannah didn’t move.

After a moment he looked over. “In or out, Darling.”

For the last four years of her life, every decision she’d made had been a gamble. With a deep breath she stepped into the apartment, ready for one more.

CHAPTER3

A RICH MAN’S SON

He moved into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Hannah stared as water poured into the sink. Her eyes moved back to him as he moved about the kitchen. In the light of the apartment she could see he looked like she remembered him: tall and loose-limbed, every move sure and confident. His honey blond hair was longer than she remembered, the angles of his face a little sharper, but he still looked like what he was: a rich man’s son.

He looked dangerous.

He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it. He didn’t offer it to her but placed it on the counter and slid it toward her.

If he was trying to set bait, he couldn’t have chosen better. Hannah took another step in, then another, until she could reach out and grasp the glass with her fingertips. She drank, forcing herself to go slowly.

The glass half-full, she placed it back on the counter and retreated back to the door.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked, his head in another cupboard. When she didn’t answer he looked at her, irritated. “Something wrong with your ears? When’s the last time you ate, Darling?”

Hannah shrugged. A tiny one, one shoulder.

Fletcher snorted again. “That’s how I knew it was you,” he said, pointing at her. He turned back. “No one ever told you to stop using your dead giveaway? Never met anyone else who did that one-shoulder thing. Fucking annoying,” he finished, deep in the cupboard.

Hannah watched him warily, her hand on the knife in her pocket, as he started unloading food onto the counter. He sliced two pieces of bread from the loaf. “I’m going to make you some tea, okay? Try not to stab me until I’m done with that.”

He rummaged around in another cupboard for mugs, then the cupboard over the sink for tea bags.

Hannah was used to processing information as it came in—problem-solving—but now the problem was that Anthony Fletcher was making her a cup of tea, and she had no solution for that.

The kettle whistled and after he’d added the tea bag, he set the mug on the counter, next to the glass of water. He buttered one slice of bread and put it in his mouth, then spread nut butter on the second slice and slid it across the counter toward the mug of tea.

He took his own cup to the wooden dining table that divided the kitchen and living room. He sat at the end, farthest from where Hannah stood.

He met her eyes, half-hidden below her hood. He held her gaze for a moment, eating his bread. “Take it,” he said, tipping his chin at the mug. When she didn’t move, he rolled his eyes. “If I am planning to do something nefarious, wouldn’t you rather face it after something to eat?”

Hannah took a wary step into the apartment. She picked up the bread and ate it, standing at the counter, staring down into the tea.

“I’ve got some milk if you want it.”

Hannah didn’t respond. Like the water, she had to force herself to eat the bread slowly, though she wanted to shove the slice into her mouth whole. She picked up the mug and took a burning sip, feeling it sear her throat all the way down.

“The jig’s up on your secret identity, Darling. You can take off the hood.”

Hannah glanced at him. She hadn’t seen her face in weeks, but she had a feeling what she looked like. Holding his gaze, she slid the hood off her head.

Something flitted across the smug expression on Fletcher’s face, but it was gone too quickly to identify. He rubbed his temple and looked away.

Hannah turned back to her tea. She should have been satisfied to see him uncomfortable, but his inability to even look at her face filled her with genuine fear.

“You might have assumed by now that I’m not about to turn you in, so would you just sit the hell down so I can talk to you?” he snapped, gesturing to the chair at the other end of the table.

With nothing to lose, Hannah carried her tea to the table and dropped into the chair.

“You look like shit,” he said, without preamble. “Do you know if you have any internal damage, or is it all just”—Fletcher tilted his chin at her face—“like that?”

Shrug. One shoulder.

“God, don’t you ever talk anymore, Darling? I feel like I spent my whole life praying you would shut the hell up, and now you can’t even open your mouth!” Fletcher exploded, looking angry. He gave her a derisive smile. “Don’t tell me someone managed to break the great leader of the Resistance.”

Hannah let the words ring through the apartment. She liked the way the sound made him wince.

Then, in a raspy voice she barely recognized, she asked, “What do you want from me?”

His jaw worked as he stared back. He finally looked away, out at the night captured through the tall windows. “You can take a shower or just go to sleep,” he said, sounding weary.

“Sleep.”

He nodded and pointed to a closed door behind her shoulder. “In there.”

* * *

Hannah woke with a jerk. Her knife was in her hand, but she was without any recollection of having snatched it from under her pillow. Whoever had woken her was pinned against the bank of windows along the bedroom wall, groaning with the force of her knee in his crotch, the knife at his neck.

The room swung into focus, and then, so did the face in front of her. 

Anthony Fletcher smirked down at her. “Stand down, Darling,” he said wryly, pushing her away.

It was easy enough to do, now that her adrenaline was waning. She stumbled back, catching the back of her knees on the bed and sitting down, hard.

There was a long silence, and in it, Hannah tried to force her head to stop spinning. She didn’t want to lose the only food she’d had in a week or more.

“Is that what you used?” he asked, and she looked up at him. He nodded at the knife still in her hands. “On Ollie?”

She looked down at the blade. In the sunlight streaming into the room, she could see flecks of blood on the steel.

“You used a pocketknife to sever a femoral artery on the first try?” Fletcher asked, sounding incredulous.

Hannah met his eyes. “It wasn’t my first try,” she said evenly.

One side of his mouth quirked up, his smirk sardonic now.

Her heart was still racing, and Hannah thought hard, trying to remember why. She’d been asleep, and he’d woken her up. “Why’d you wake me up?” she asked, her body tensing for another attack.

“I didn’t. You’ve been asleep for twenty hours. I was checking to make sure you hadn’t died in my bed. Which would have been highly inconvenient for me.” He walked around to the other side of the bed and grabbed a pillow, pulling the case off and tossing it on the floor.

Hannah watched him as he tugged the duvet out from under her and started stripping off the cover.

“What do you want from me?” she asked again.

He didn’t look at her. “What I want is for you to stop acting like a fucking wild animal. What I also want is for you to take a shower because you smell like one too. I’m going to have to burn these sheets as it is.”

Hannah stood and inched toward the door.

Fletcher yanked the fitted sheet from the mattress. “The door on the other side of the living room. Towels are in the cupboard.”

The golden light of late afternoon filled the living room, and Hannah tallied the facts: one door, leading to the hallway and stairs; two wide windows, a straight drop to the sidewalk on a semi-quiet street. No fire escape.

The rest of the information was immaterial, but slightly interesting. It was an old building, pre-war, maybe, with original molding and—she looked down—hand-laid wooden floors. It was spare and meticulously clean, and all the furniture looked clean and modern beneath the high ceilings.

Fletcher moved in his room, and she darted in and leaned against the bathroom door. She knew her standards had changed in the last four years, but by any standard, it was the cleanest bathroom she’d ever been in. Without thinking about it, she glanced into the mirror. Then she didn’t move for a long time, because she was staring straight into a stranger’s face.

How Fletcher had recognized her was anyone’s guess because she didn’t recognize herself. The shadows beneath her eyes were so dark they looked bruised. Maybe they were bruised, she couldn’t remember. Her jaw was deep purple, her bottom lip cut and swollen, the angles of her cheekbones razor sharp, and her eyes . . . her left eye was bruised and still swollen, but—she stepped closer—not so swollen she couldn’t see what she could never hide: her blue right eye, her green left eye. Heterochromia. Fletcher had been wrong—that was her dead giveaway.

She angled her face and saw a spattering of blood along her jaw, and—with a wave of nausea—realized it was Oliver’s. She braced her hands against the sink, dizzy, taking one shaky breath after another.

Suddenly too hot, she turned away and pulled off her sweatshirt. She thought of the water in the kitchen and, holding her breath, flipped on the water in the shower. She stared at it as it ran, crystal clear, into the drain.

She hadn’t seen a running shower in four years.

She stripped off the rest of her clothes, letting them fall in a dark mass at her feet. Stepping away from them felt risky, but Fletcher was right. Whatever he was going to do to her, she might as well use his shower first.

She closed her eyes into the warm spray of the shower and stood for a long, long time. She might have fallen asleep, but the next thing she knew, there was a sharp rap on the frosted glass shower door.

She jumped and sent half a dozen shampoo bottles crashing to the floor.

“You alive in there?” Fletcher’s voice asked.

Hannah’s eyes darted around, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. Of course stepping away from her clothes had felt like a risk. The only weapon she had against Fletcher was still in the pocket of her filthy pants. She shook her head at her own idiocy as she pried the safety strip away from the blade of his razor, slicing her fingertips in the process.

“You’ve been in there for an hour.” He paused. “If you’re okay, just say yes, and I’ll get out of here.”

Hannah thought hard, looking for the trap. “Yes,” she finally said.

She could hear Fletcher sigh in exasperation on the other side of the door.

“I’m taking these clothes,” he said, stepping away.

“No,” Hannah said convulsively, her hand on the shower door. “I need my—”

“I’ll leave it on the counter,” he snapped. “I’m trashing the clothes. I’ll be lucky if you haven’t infested my house. I’ll leave something else in here for you.”

The door slammed shut behind him and Hannah shivered in its chill breeze.

She retrieved the bottles at her feet and replaced them on the shower rack. She eyed the array of bottles and tubes. Fletcher had a suspicious number of them. Either they were all his—he was famously vain in school—or he had a girlfriend.

Curious, she used them all, shampooing her hair four times. It hurt too much to reach her arms up to do it, so she bent her head low and used only her right hand.

When she got out, there was a clean towel next to the sink, and under it, a pair of gray sweats and a white T-shirt.

She unfolded each item, shaking it out, running her fingers along every seam, looking for anything.

She found nothing, but as she slipped the clothes on, one thought looped in her head: Fletcher had nothing to gain by helping her.

She picked up the knife and flipped it open, checking that Fletcher hadn’t removed the blade or dulled it to make it unusable. It looked the same, and cleanly sliced the tip of her finger when she tested it.

She closed the knife and slipped it into the pocket of the sweats before she turned the knob.

The living room was empty, but there was a bowl of some sort of soup and a glass of water on the table.

She stepped warily toward it, waiting for Fletcher to pop up from somewhere, but the apartment was quiet and still. Sunlight pooled on the dark wooden floor, and the smell of the soup wafted over, making her stomach clench painfully.

She sat gingerly on the chair and leaned forward to sniff the bowl. She gave the bowl a little shake. It looked like chicken noodle soup. It smelled like it too. She supposed she shouldn’t eat it. Fletcher could have slipped something into the soup, knowing she’d be too hungry to be careful.

He was right about that, she thought, picking up the spoon.